The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud

By Becky Holmes

Of course the title and cover of this booked grabbed my attention immediately! I’d read articles about romance scams before and wondered how anyone could fall for them. And, as the author points out, thinking yourself impervious to a particular type of scam can lead you to lower your guard and become more susceptible. So, I clearly had to learn more.

Becky Holmes is quite funny, in a particularly British way that I don’t always get, so while I was giggling out loud several times, I also occasionally just sort of shrugged. She begins with a lot of texts leading various scammers on, which is entertaining but gets repetitive. This is also how she first got interested in the topic, entertaining herself with the various scam messages she got across social media platforms. The silliness sometimes felt a little jarring in contrast with the harm being discussed, but as she got more into the topic with accounts from victimized people, it got fairly grim and I appreciated the levity.

As ridiculous as the scams sound when reading them from the comfort of one’s own home, she explains that they are most effective on people going through other trauma in their lives, and desperate for love and connection enough to overlook the signs of fraud that are obvious to the rest of us. And in that light, scammers purposefully looking for people in trouble and illness is particularly disgusting. The people Holmes interviews look back at their own situation and can’t quite believe they were in such bad shape to fall for the lines they did, which really struck me because I’ve certainly related to being retrospectively astonished at how stress and exhaustion can compromise my reasoning.

Towards the end of the book, though, the cumulative stories all started to feel a bit draining. I felt discouraged by the cynicism of the scammers preying on people looking for love, and wondered what it was doing for their long-term psyche. Even worse, I fell back into some victim blaming, not for falling for fairly blatant false scenarios, but their willingness to go along with some incredibly shady dealings that could have gotten them in serious legal trouble if they’d been real.

The author’s total and unconditional support of the victims (and mild scolding of anyone even remotely critical of them) didn’t help. Holmes explicitly compares romance scams to abusive relationships, but they seemed more comparable to addiction to me. The victims become so attached to the scammer that they’ll do anything for them and deny all reason, including pushing away family and friends. (Especially shocking is when some admit that they would welcome the scammer back if they got back in touch.) Of course this is terrible and they need help and understanding, but it is not such a shock that their other personal relationships have taken a hit in the process.